I have lead and co-lead activities for the Girls in STEM program in Jonesboro and Conway, AR. This is a summer program that exposes young girls to different career paths in STEM outside of the stereotypes that are commonly presented. I present on being a field biologist and display the biodiversity they can find in their local creeks and rivers, outside of the typical bass and sunfish, using museum specimens and going outside when possible. The still is from a cover feature of the program hosted by the aquatic sciences at Astate (https://www.kait8.com/clip/14476880/girls-in-stem/). River Watson and I co-lead an activity at this highlighting the biodiversity and letting the future scientists handle specimens they may have never seen before that day.

I am one of the co-founders of the American Fisheries Society subunit at Arkansas State University, and we have used resources and funds from ACBC to host outreach events like the one displayed. At this particular event we wanted to demonstrate and get the community involved with how and why we collect specimens and voucher them. We let participants electroshock and sample for aquatic organisms on a university pond that gets stocked routinely for catfish and trout. 

I have hosted and assisted multiple "fish shows". These are events that have been hosted at community and local k-12 events highlighting aquatic biodiversity that can be encountered in their backyard with the occasional unique marine specimen. My favorite specimens to showcase are local "river monsters" with how popular Jeremy Wade's show is. It is fun highlighting these large specimens that inhabit local rivers and talking about their importance to the ecosystem to make them more familiar to the community and less monstrous. 

ACBC hosts an annual BioBlitz where curators from each collection come together to characterize the biodiversity of a local area with the community. Representing the aquatic collections, we teach the community about all fauna in and around the river and creeks, teach them to seine, and how to use a boat for electroshocking when the conditions are right. It is always a fun time when you catch aquatic dinosaurs like gar and see the shock and awe on the participants faces when you ask if they would like a photo with their catch.